For two hundred years, the towns carried these differences through the quick boom and then the slow decline of the New England agricultural economy. During the boom years and up through the Civil War, both Grafton and Canaan were buoyed by the capitalistic forces that prevailed in an age of prosperity, with Grafton’s population swelling to 1,259 in 1850 and Canaan’s going a bit higher, to 1,682.
